being in the head business myself, and seeing what some of the other companies that emphasize Mopar products offer....and what they charge is always interesting to me.

i've noticed that many of the places selling heads or cylinder head services offer "stage II" porting.
i see what some places charge for this work, and have often thought to myself, "i dont know how they can do it for that price".

since ive just had a chance to evaluate a set of "stage II" ported BB Edelbrock heads from AeroHead, i thought maybe i would comment about te whole "stage II" thing.

basically, there is no standard for what this term refers to, so what you get seems to vary in terms of price, and the amount of work performed, depending on who you have do the work.

in my book, "stage II" means its the next step above "stage I". it should involve enough reworking of the head to provide a noticable improvement over the first stage.
because different heads come from the various manufacturers in different states of being "finished", there is a difference in how much work is done to each particular
type of head for the various stages, depending on what kind head of you're dealing with.
for example, an Indy SR comes with no porting or blending whatsoever, but an Edelbrock head has the blowls blended into the seats, and some slight blending at the intake port opening.
so, the way i look at it, the first stage of improvement for each of these heads is "stage I", but they dont get the same exact work done on them for that first stage of improvement from how they come "out of the box", since they aren't the same to begin with.
to my way of thinking, "stage I" should provide the first stage of improvement compared to how they come out of the box.
the SR head comes with a poor valve job and no porting or blending at all, so IMO the first stage of improvement with them is a decent valve job, and blend the bowls and intake opening.....or about the same work that an E head comes with.

basically, when you're buying a porting "package", you're buying time.
since porting by the nature of the work is often billed per hour, the only way a shop should be able to give you a price before the work has been completed is if they already know how long the job is going to take.
for this reason, i have different prices for some heads for the same "stage" of work, and....different heads often get slightly different things done to them for the same
"stage".

i've had the chance to inspect and test some work done by some other shops to see what they are offering in their head porting packages. after you get to see what some
of the other shops are producing, the differences in the prices between the various shops becomes apparent.
the bottom line is....most shops charge roughly the same price for the time they spend working on the heads.....so if you are spending less at one shop vs another, there is a good chance there is less work being done.

to try and illustrate this i have a set of numbers for the intake port flow on some SR heads, all done to each shops "stage II" level of preperation.
ive also included a set of numbers for an out of the box head as a baseline.
these numbers can all be compared apples to apples since they all came from the same bench, with the same operator at the controls, and were all tested on the same sized bore adapter, which in this case is 4.250.
the heads were positioned over the bore adapter so that the edge of the chamber, adjacent to the intake valve, was even with the edge of the bore.
also, this is the same position on the head for all tests(#4/#5).

lift----stock-----A-----B-----C
.100---66.4---68.9---64.9---68.0
.200--136.4--142.6--139.1--141.8
.300--196.4--202.3--202.5--202.5
.400--240.3--246.5--249.9--251.5
.500--275.8--283.2--286.8--293.7
.550--283.0--292.2--295.5--308.1
.600--283.0--299.4--300.9--313.4
.650--283.0--302.9--304.5--315.2
.700--283.0--302.9--308.1--320.6

what i can tell you in this case is, it isnt really the quality of the work that made for the differences in flow, but rather the quantity(however, i realize thats not always the case).
the A head had less work done to the port than the B head, which had less work done to it than the C head.
the C head had the most amount of modification, and flowed the best.

anyway....i just thought i would provide a little food for thought for those of you who may be in the market for some new heads, or having some head work done.
its not safe to assume that just because two places may use the same term....as in "stage II", that you're going to get the same level of work....or the same amount of flow.

OK, can we break it down a little further?

What's the pricing for shop A, shop B and shop C?

i dont know what shop B charges, but shop A is $600, and shop C is $800.

I don`t think the examples "A,B,C" were meant as different shops versions of stage II porting,but as a reference as to the differece between stage 1,2 and 3 porting.

OK...shop B would (hopefully) be in between....

At least they sorta make sense, and there is nothing weird going on with the prices.

good info Dwayne! i think ill be dealing w/ only one "shop" CHIP

i cnc stuff,, i never really got into the whole stage thing, just however much money you want to spend ill do that much work, for people on budgets. i am relatively fast grinding on heads, its been hard for me to employ anyone because of this. fastplymouth is right, you should disregard the stage crap and go to a place based on reputation or a guy that you believe is honest. if a place gets 800 for whats called stage 2 they shouldnt be in business unless its a prostock head or something. 400-500 in labor for porting is a stage 2 deal id say. bowls, turn the shortside, blend the chambers, and the intake openings. or something like that,,,, just goto someone who is honest, has a "following" or a good customer base that says good things about him.it takes a good head porter about 20hrs labor to fully port a set of heads, 30 for a more race head. and remember airflow isnt everything, area matters, and good quality guides and a good valve job is the #1 priority, if the valves dont seal, all else doesnt matter.

jeff
modern cylinder head

read it as it says,, 400-500 in porting. if i do something by hand, ill get 80-100/hour, but agian im fast at what i do, it takes me about 4 hours to port and polish an indy manifold, and about 17 hours to fully hand port a set of indy bb wedge heads. are you getting 800 for a stage 2? how much do you get to fully port a head if thats your price? just curious as to yuour hourly rate for hand porting.

jeff

I think the most important thing is good communication with your porter. You have to tell him what you want to accomplish and he needs to know what you have for a combination. I use Jeff exclusively, and I think my performance speaks for itself with the small Icky 440-1's. I started with just bowls and gasket matching and had him tweak on them every couple years as funds were available till I got to max potential (we are at max aren't we Jeff?). Every step was reasonably priced and showed results.

my stage II includes everything except parts.
valve job, cleaning, hone guides, back cut valves, assembly, porting, and a flow test.
i get 45/hr for porting.

for a set of SR's, thats $800.
the whole port gets reworked, and on these heads i spend quite a bit of time trimming down the guide bosses and trying to get the intake short turns right.
i figure on about 13.5hrs for the porting portion of this job, which is basically a mild full port job.

IMO, this is how much work it takes to make a worthwhile improvement in flow over basic bowl porting/gasket matching.

on the 17hr type job for the 440-1's, what would the finished runner volume be??
and if i read that right....at $80-100/hr you'd get $1360-1700 for fully hand porting those heads.

i havent done too many of the 440-1's, but it takes me about 22hrs to do them, and the intake runners end up at about 335cc's for that level of work.
i havent figured out how to get the chips to come out any faster than that.

Jeff,

Have you done any porting on Bulldogs yet? Need to have a set done. Just curious.

Thanks

Todd

FWIW...I usually port a head based on many, many things like what the customer wants, rpm, car, converter and so on. I may even build an intake port up in some cases like a 350 chevy using too big a head...if I cant get the guy to sell the heads and use the right one, I may epoxy up the port some and spend less time actually porting, yet the price is more because of the time epoxing and the cost of the epoxy.
Brian

yes, but i drop it to 950 in porting labor, 150 valve job, 150 guides if they are replaced, and 60-75 for assembly with seals. like i said im faster than most, its not in getting the chips to fly out faster, its in using the right cutters and grinders to be faster. my cnc makes em fly out fast,, takes about 3 hours to fully port a head with chambers.by the way i read your post youd get about 500 for your stage 2,, which is what i said....
i meant no harm dwayne.

jeff

it is an interesting comparison from shop to shop. the "stage" term has always kind of bugged me alittle. as dwayne said, there's just no standard in the industry to support one stage of work vs. another. i like his way of thinking on it though. i've had heads at our place that were supposed to flow some big #'s that just didn't live up to them, and some that were very good from other shops. i won't mention any names so no war gets started, LOL. AFAIK i haven't had any of moderncylinderheads come through our shop. i have had heads from dwayne porter in there and i know the quality of the work he does. i'd trust him to port any head for any given combo based on what i've seen and the results i've gotten with his work. i quit porting heads some years ago due to lack of time, but it's pretty easy for anyone with experience to tell the real good head porters from the wanna-be's at a glance of their work. i'm sure moderns work is good also, based on what i've heard. one day maybe i'll get to see some of it.

"the SR head comes with a poor valve job and no porting or blending at all, so IMO the first stage of improvement with them is a decent valve job, and blend the bowls and intake opening.....or about the same work that an E head comes with. "


WOW---THANKS INDY HEAD----------NOW I WILL THROW MY $$$$ TO EDELBROCK.

that [profanity deleted] me off-----pay high $ for a race product and you get bent over the table.Thankfully we have the web to share this info !!!!

Sorry to vent --- im just saving up to buy a set of "race" heads-----and i want them to be right for $1300............